Beyond the Veil
by Star of Light
Summary: So here's one thing Sirius just doesn't get. Why the bloody hell does everyone think that falling through a pair of bloody curtains kills a man! It doesn't! Sirius isn't dead- he's just stuck...beyond the veil. Stupid wankers.
1. Beneath the Veil

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Title: Beneath the Veil  
**Author:** moi, MalfoysChick  
**Rating:** PG (I like to swear)  
  
***  
Remus shuddered as he walked into the room of the Department of Mysteries. His last living friend had died here; falling through that archway. The black veil swayed and stirred, as if to mock him. Dumbledore had asked him here to help clean; in case they found any of Sirius's effects to bring back to Harry. Remus had snorted in doubt; but he had come anyway just out of curiousity.  
  
Remus knew it was going to be a hard time, cleaning in here. Sirius was _gone_, he was _dead_, and now Remus would be spending time in this room that should be considered sacred. Sure, Sirius had been a bully towords Snape in school, but he had out-grown that by far, had become a better man with each passing year, even as he had suffered through Azkaban.  
  
He walked up to the veil and stopped short before it, remembering how he had had to restrain Harry from pulling it to the side, how he had had to restrain Harry from seeing Sirius's... well, he supposed it would have been his ghost. No one knew for sure. Remus looked to the ground, and saw a glint of metal. Squatting down, he saw it was just a chip of steel that had probably been part of a large table or some such. He sighed and dropped it, looking again to the veil and the arch.  
  
'I'm sorry, Padfoot,' he thought heavily before whispering it aloud. He placed his hand on the arch, looking at the carvings as he prepared to stand.. But wait. they were shaped like arrows.. pointing down.. Remus followed their path to the bottom of the arch, where he realize the stone column was sitting nearly an inch off the ground.   
  
'Curious...' he thought. Shrugging, he pushed against the column to get up.. and it moved. It had literally moved a few inches farther away from Remus. Startled, Remus pushed it another foot forward.. and saw a boot-clad foot.   
  
He could have jumped. Was that not Sirius's boot? Remus ran to the other column and pushed that back as well. It revealed another boot, and a few inches of leg, shrouded by black robes..  
  
Remus could have screamed when he saw Sirius's wand laying next to the leg. Calming himself down, he took the ankles in his hands and dragged the body out.  
  
Sirius's rough voice, slightly hoarse at the moment, filled the chamber: "You _bloody_ WANKER! Didn't you even THINK to look **BENEATH THE DAMN VEIL!?**" The supposed corpse sat up, only to see Remus fall to the ground in a dead faint.  
  
He sighed. "How the hell am I supposed to get some bloody food? And how am I going to explain this to Harry? 'Oh, Harry, sorry about the bloody scare. You know how you lose a Cheeto while sitting on the couch, and you always think to look in the couch, but never under it? Those bloody gits, well, hah! They just forgot to look beneath the veil, you see, so I'm just still bloody well alive.' I can see it now. The poor boy will die of shock."  
***


	2. Above the Veil

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Above the Veil - MalfoysChick  
  
***  
The room was freezing cold, dark, and shadowy. Remus shivered involuntarily at the creepyness. He had come to just check, to make sure. He had told Harry that Sirius was gone... but Remus wasn't quite sure. And he had to be. He had to know whether or not to mourn.  
  
The veil looked slightly ethereal, with a soft glow coming from behind it; the curtain swirled in the unknown breeze that never quite reached Remus's face. He stepped inside the stone arch, nearly touching the veil but not; he was careful not to letthe material brush his skin because then he'd be gone in an instant, too.  
  
Remus looked up to the stone above him. Suddenly, it seemed as though the top of the arch just disappeared, because there was a body falling from the air, landing right before Remus's feet. He jumped back in fright, and looked over to the body. The man _must_ have been dead, for no one could have withstood the fifteen foot fall.. and who knew how far he had fallen before appearing? However, he did. The man stood up slowly, groaning with pain, grasping his lower back and his gut and leaning over.  
  
"You would have thought the big man upstairs could have come up with a better way to return me, huh?" Sirius's voice rasped, filling the chamber around Remus.  
  
Sirius stood up in time to see Remus fall over in a dead faint.  
  
He sighed heavily.  
  
"...Guess not."  
  
***  



	3. Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil  
MalfoysChick  
PG  
***  
  
Remus entered the Department of Mysteries, and then the Death Chamber. His best friend had died here, behind that damn veil. He had come to grieve. But more importantly, he had come to see. It was risky, but Lupin had no hopes anymore. He had to know.  
  
_Just what was behind the veil?_  
  
The question had been haunting him for months. He didn't care if it meant his end, he just had to know.  
  
_What was behind the veil?_  
  
He walked over to it, and lifted his right hand to the right edge of the rippling fabric. He didn't care if he died, trying to find out. He grabbed the edge before he lost his courage and tugged. Nothing happened, the edge of the fabric didn't budge. Lupin sighed. Well, great. The veil was broken.  
  
He lifted his right hand again, and this time grabbed the left edge and tugged. It flew open, to reveal a dark space. There was nothing in it. There was no sound... until the laugh. It was hearty laughter, the kind that Sirius had laughed... wait. It was Sirius's laugh. A figure stepped out of the darkened shadows; Remus saw the light on his face and screamed.  
  
It was Sirius, cracking up. "Man!" he exclaimed, completely unaware that Remus was paler than a ghost. "Man, I'm such an idiot. I've been trying to open that thing for _months_, Remus! And I just realized what I've been doing wrong. you gotta pull from the left, not the right!"  
  
***  



	4. Within the Veil

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Within the Veil - MalfoysChick  
***  
  
Remus walked into the Death Chamber. The veil stood in the left hand corner, shrouded in darkness. Fitting, for an item of instantaneous death. His need to mourn Sirius had drawn him here.   
  
Here Sirius had died.   
  
Here, Remus had lost the last of his friends.   
  
He walked over to the archway. The veil hung within it, but Remus noted something wrong with it. It didn't swirl in the imaginable wind like it had in the past. It hung, instead, bunched in the middle of the curtain-rod. (veil-rod?) Remus narrowed his eyes and stepped forward. A moment later he jumped back in shock.   
  
He could swear on Harry's life that the bunched veil had moved, and it hadn't been a motion normally related with wind on thin material. It had been - there, it did it again! Another jerky movement.. Remus stared, and his eyes widened as he heard a humanlike noise.. almost like a grunt.  
  
Another one came. The movements came in rapid succession. Remus was apprehensive; what could be inside the veil?  
  
_What could be inside the veil_? his mind whispered again and again, over and over, piercing his brain.  
  
Suddenly, the bunch of material burst open and a human-like figure fell to the shale floor with a loud thump.  
  
"Blimey!" Sirius's loud voice surrounded Remus.  
  
"Blimey! My _God_ that was hard to chew through! It's bad enough that I had managed to get stuck _in_ the material of that bloody veil, but honestly! Couldn't I have been graced with the luck of having some random knife in my bloody back pocket to make my life easier!?"  
  
Sirius sighed and stood up. Remus was already dead to the world (no pun intended), laying on the floor after fainting.  
  
"Well," Sirius continued in a more humorous tone, "at least I know what a butterfly feels like."  



	5. To the Left of the Veil

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Title: _To The Left of the Veil_   
**Author:** MalfoysChick  
**Rating:** PG  
***  
  
He really was bored. It was just a small space, with no walls and hardly any light. It was the brightest in the middle of the room, and so that was where Sirius stayed. No, of _course_ he wasn't afraid of the dark. But it was definitely creepy to be all alone in a tiny space with no walls and dark corners. He had been sitting in the same exact spot for what seemed like ages, and every now and then, he stuck up a hand to feel the stubble on his chin.  
  
He was beyond five o'clock shadow. He was beyond day-old stubble. He was onto full fledged week long beard, here.  
  
Sirius sighed and looked around to the boring floor that faded to black five feet in every direction, except for directly in front of him. There was a path of light that led to the veil. Of course, he had tried multiple times to tear through the thing, pull it one way or the other.. he had even tried chewing. Nothing worked. The thin flimsy material was indestructible. And that was infuriating.  
  
He felt a tingle in his buttocks and groaned, knowing full well that his bottom had just fallen asleep... _again_. Sirius stood slowly and shook out his legs, a frown on his face. What was he supposed to do? Sit and live for eternity. Well, if he was going to do that, he sure was glad that as of yet he hadn't gotten hungry. Maybe it was a curse of the chamber - one didn't need to eat.. Although if he was hungry, he probably would have tried a lot harder to eat through the damn veil.  
  
Sirius had to do something. He closed his eyes and walked around a bit, but was so apprehensive that he opened his eyes quickly to find himself almost completely shrouded in the black corners of the space. He jumped and ran back to the light.  
  
He was just so... _bored_. Completely and utterly _bored_. _BORED_. **BORED**. BORED. **_BOREDDDD!_** He _had_ to find a way out. Sighing again, Sirius shut his eyes tightly and willed himself not to open them for a good five minutes. Hmmm... maybe... it _had_ to. It was just so perfect. It was only space. No walls.   
  
He moved a bit to his right, then to his left. Step, step, step, clap! Step, step, step, clap! Shimmy forward, Shimmy back, change direction!   
  
"It's electric!" Sirius said aloud. He heard the echo of his voice in the empty space, eyes still closed. If this didn't work, he might have to _will_ himself home like Dorothy in Oz. And that wouldn't be easy. _He_ didn't have the cool shoes covered in red glitter - er, the ruby slippers. The steps took him all over the space, back and forth clapping one way, clapping the other.  
  
"You can't see it - It's ELECTRIC!" He shouted. He didn't even know how he remembered the Muggle song. He hadn't heard it... why, not since before James and Lily died. (Lily had a big record collection.)  
  
"It's ELECTRIC! Boogie woogie woogie!" Sirius opened his eyes a crack, expecting to be lost in the black. But he wasn't. He was out of the veil. He stood to the left of it, about five or side feet away.   
  
Amazed, he looked around the rest of the room. There was a human body laying on the ground and Sirius hesitantly moved over to it. It was Remus, just coming back to consciousness.  
  
As the werewolf cracked his eyes open, he groaned and muttered, "First the voice, now true hallucinations complete with mental imagery? My God, I need to see a shrink."  
  
Sirius let out a cackle. "You heard me doing the Electric Slide, did you? I knew that dumb song would come in handy one of these days." He wiped his brow. No Dorothy antics for him... thank God.


	6. Over the Veil

Over the Veil - a pointless SiriusComesBack! Cookie

Remus walked into the room, knowing it would be painful. The veil was in there, innocently waving in the invisible breeze. He'd never have guessed that only a week before, the bloody thing had taken his last friend's life. Sirius… just gone. Remus shut his eyes, trying to kill the images flashing through his mind. Harry was heartbroken, and Remus was right behind him It was a horrid memory for everyone. Waking over to the veil, Remus strained to hear the whispering voices behind the shroud of death. He sighed, missing the brief time at 12 Grimmauld Place, when they had been in each other's company, that they could almost imagine it was like old times when James and Lily were on a date, and Wormtail wasn't to be found.

Remus rubbed his forehead wearily, knowing that it was insane that he was standing in front of the _veil_, hoping to catch Sirius's voice amidst the whispers. He sighed with frustration, and turned to face the veil. His next motion was even crazier than anything he'd done so far.

"Sirius," Remus began, his voice close to cracking as he spoke to the black curtain, "I know it's only been twenty hours since I was last here, to say goodbye to you. But I just can't help myself. You're the best friend a werewolf could ask for." Remus had to stop as he began tearing up. He shuddered. Unbeknownst to him, a large beam of light began materializing behind his back, from the ceiling to the floor. Within it, a man's body grew from dust particles, the light shimmering around him as he appeared. The man waved and smiled at the ceiling. Remus noticed an odd shadow being cast on the veil, and turned around to see Sirius standing there with a wild grin, staring at his hand.

Remus let out a rather girly shriek, clapped his hand over his mouth and hit the floor in a dead faint. Sirius frowned at his limp body, sprawled in a swoon-like position.

"Well, gee," he said grouchily, "if you wanted to know how I got back, all you had to do was ask -- I requested that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beam me back. Big mishap, really, that I ended up on the _Enterprise_ and all."


	7. To the Right of the Veil

To the Right of the Veil

Everyone on the "other" side of the veil wore bright blue spandex. Sirius had yet to figure this out. Even the big bald guy who _shouldn't_ have been wearing spandex wore it. Like a uniform. Kind of. He sighed, sitting on the pile of extra bright blue spandex. It was actually really comfy sitting on the extra bright blue spandex, but not so comfy wearing it, really. It chafed the 'no-no region', as Sirius liked to call it. 

Every hour, on the hour, a new ballet symphony began playing off in the distance. Currently, they were on _The Nutcracker,_ but Sirius had a feeling they'd be switching over to _Swan Lake _soon. It was then that he had his fifteen seconds of fame, his hour of glory…

He danced for them.

It kept the insane ones from going even more insane, and the sane ones from going insane to being with, and the ones who were teetering on the line… well, they just kept on teetering on the brink of insanity but never actually went over it. They were all, instead, quite enamored by Mr. Black's spectacular show - he was the Swan Princess, the Prince, all the featured dancers, the chorus and all the small parts whose names no one knew. But of course, his crowning moment was Act II, the Black Swan. The thirty-two pirouettes were flawless every time. However, the spandex chafed. He was in so much pain.

And then there the opening overture was, haunting melody with beautiful harmonization… He began his lovely dance. In between acts, the audience applauded. 

***

Outside the veil, a young girl sat crying, desperately clutching a magazine titled, _WWW_ - The Convict Issue. The cover featured a picture of Sirius Black, smiling nicely, his hair glinting in the light and tousled fashionably. He winked roguishly, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. The girl wailed, tossing her head back, the tears falling. Her bright red hair was in disarray, falling out of a sparkly scrunchie. She looked to be the ultimate fangirl -- Ginny Weasley, President of the I-Love-Sirius-Black-And-Don't-Care-If-He's-Guilty-Of-Killing-A-Dozen-No-Thirteen-Oh-Bugger-It!-Or-If-He's-Dead! Club. (The name would have been longer but even Ginny Weasley didn't have that much breath.) 

"Oh, Sirius," she wailed, shaking madly, her whole body shuddering with each sob. "I LOVE YOU EVEN IF YOU'RE DECEASED!"

***

The pirouettes were not going well. He was only on number twelve, and already he was traveling across the floor, moving quickly to the right. _Uh-oh_, Sirius thought to himself. _I have to tighten my buttocks to stay in one place!_ He tried, it didn't work; his buttocks were as tight as could be. He began moving more madly, more out of control… Sirius was only on number twenty… 

At twenty four, he was in the dark shadows at the edge of the area behind the veil. At thirty, he was completely in the dark. He shrieked, closed his eyes, and made it barely to thirty-two without falling. He stopped, and bowed, his eyes still closed. There was no applause -- no _applause_!? There was another shriek, echoing his own.

"Oh my God! It's Sirius Black, back from the Dead!" Ginny Weasley was shrieking at the top of her lungs. He was outside the veil, standing far off to the right of it. Sirius screamed, flapping his arms and looking around for something to cover his spandex clad body with. Fangirls couldn't see him like _this_!

And fangirls (plural, mind you) there were. They crawled out from behind the desk, the columns of the veil archway, they came from the shadows, they dropped from the ceiling (SWAT style) and the whole floor seemed to gape open with trap-doors. Sirius again shrieked, and sprinted for the doorway, being ambushed left and right by hands grabbing for his magnificent ballerina-body. 

The only safe place was the streets of London. In his bright blue spandex.

***

A Muggle, standing on the corner of the street, gasped as the man in bright blue spandex sprinted by, screaming his head off. He was followed by a gaggle of girls, all screaming as well. Made for a bloody bad headache. The Muggle shrugged it off anyway, muttering as he continued on his way, "Damn bloody performance artists. Think they can do whatever they bloody well please."


End file.
